CITIZEN ARMY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 6 May 1939, Page 7

CITIZEN ARMY

MR SAVAGE’S STATEMENT ON UNIFORMS RESENTED BY TERRITORIALS. HARDLY LIKELY TO ASSIST RECRUITING. I (By Telegraph—Press Association.) WELLINGTON, This Day. Indignation at the references to ‘goose-stepping" and "dressing up in uniform,” made by the Prime Minister, Mr Savage in his statement about a .-itizen army was expressed yesterday by members of the Territorial Army. Ihe remarks were described as hardly ’■■kely to assist the recruiting campaign, which is being conducted by the force with ihe support of the Minister of Defence, Mr Jones.

One member of the Territorial Army mid he did not think the King’s uniform should be the subject of such deprecatory remarks. The Prime Miniser had said that the Government had rot talked about putting 50,000 Terri'.orials into uniform, but about a citizen army in which men would "not be dressed up in uniform but would go about their business, feeling that they were citizens and soldiers at the same time, not goose-stepping up and down the country in uniform and spending hundreds of thousands a year in doing the job.” The inference was that the Prime"; Minister considered the Territorials were people who ‘’goose-stepped up and down the country spending hundreds of thousands a year in doing the job. The New Zealand Expeditionary Force in the Great War had been a citizen army commanded by citizen officers and the Territorial Army of today was the same. It was composed of citizens imbued with such a sense of civic responsibility that they were prepared to devote time and energy to fitting themselves for the defence of their country. Apparently the Prime Minister did not consider it a citizen army,' however. Did he think that Territorials were not men who could "go about their business feeling that they were citizens and soldiers at the same time,” but soldiery not entitled to the dignity of ordinary citizenship. The Prime Minister’s conception of a citizen army was apparently somethingon the lines of a National Register. It would be ridiculous to call such a thing a "citizen army."

Another member of the Territorial Army, an officer, said that he would prefer not to discuss the question, recalling the fate of the Four Colonels. He did, however,. express disgust at the Prime Minister’s reference to “dressing up in uniform.” Another opinion was that the Prime Minister’s reference came ill from the leader of the Government which had clothed the Territorial Army in a new dress uniiorm, much more decorative than anything it had previously had. It was not essential to wear uniform to serve one’s country, but that did not justify contemptuous references such as the Prime Minister had- mad, the speaker said.